laying down his hat and the flowers, which tumbled
apart and lay in a loose heap. She had flinched from his
advance. She had no will, no being. The wind boomed in the
chimney, and he waited. He had disembarrassed his hands. Now he
shut his fists.

He was aware of her standing there unknown, dread, yet
related to him.

"I came up," he said, speaking curiously matter-of-fact and
level, "to ask if you'd marry me. You are free, aren't you?"

There was a long silence, whilst his blue eyes, strangely
impersonal, looked into her eyes to seek an answer to the truth.
He was looking for the truth out of her. And she, as if
hypnotized, must answer at length.

"Yes, I am free to marry."

The expression of his eyes changed, became less impersonal,
as if he were looking almost at her, for the truth of her.
Steady and intent and eternal they were, as if they would never
change. They seemed to fix and to resolve her. She quivered,
feeling herself created, will-less, lapsing into him, into a
common will with him.

"You want me?" she said.

A pallor came over his face.

"Yes," he said.

Still there was no response and silence.

"No," she said, not of herself. "No, I don't know."

He felt the tension breaking up in him, his fists slackened,
he was unable to move. He stood there looking at her, helpless
in his vague collapse. For the moment she had become unreal to
him. Then he saw her come to him, curiously direct and as if
without movement, in a sudden flow. She put her hand to his
coat.

"Yes I want to," she said, impersonally, looking at him with
wide, candid, newly-opened eyes, opened now with supreme truth.
He went very white as he stood, and did not move, only his eyes
were held by hers, and he suffered. She seemed to see him with
her newly-opened, wide eyes, almost of a child, and with a
strange movement, that was agony to him, she reached slowly
forward her dark face and her breast to him, with a slow
insinuation of a kiss that made something break in his brain,
and it was darkness over him for a few moments.

He had her in his arms, and, obliterated, was kissing her.
And it was sheer, bleached agony to him, to break away from
himself. She was there so small and light and accepting in his
arms, like a child, and yet with such an insinuation of embrace,
of infinite embrace, that he could not bear it, he could not
stand.

He turned and looked for a chair, and keeping her still in
his arms, sat down with her